June 2006, Week 3 --Phone Home

We see so many articles about phones that sometimes we think we
should be writing a phone column. Instead, we'll write a little bit
about this phone:

It's called "DuraFon,"
from EnGenius. This is not a cell phone. It's a cordless phone that
still works when you walk into an area where your old cordless phone
didn't. (Work, that is.) Oh yeah, we forgot one other thing: It's
expensive.

For $540 (at
bizrate.com) you can have a cordless phone that keeps on talking even if
you're 10 floors away in a big building, or three blocks away in the
city. The maker claims you can be a couple of miles away if you're in
open country (whatever that is). If you're back in your home or office,
it's also a regular phone. You plug it into the phone line just like the
cheap ones.

But, just like
the ads say on late-night television: That's not all you get. If you buy
extra DuraFon handsets, for a mere $340 each, you get cordless phones
that can work as walkie-talkies. The range stays the same, and you can
talk to just one of the other people with one of these phones, or all of
them at once. Other walkie-talkies, like the ones from Motorola, can do
this too, but there's a significant difference here.

For instance:
If you're in a business where you have to be out in the yard (like a
lumberyard), or on the farm, or out in a warehouse, and the phone rings
back in the office ... well, you just answer it. Your cordless phone
will ring too, and you pick up as if you were in the office, or take a
walkie-talkie call. You can also connect an answering machine to the
base phone if you prefer.

We found the sound
quality to be good and the features all worked as claimed. The price was
kinda scary, though. More info at
www.engeniustech.com

The Boss is Still the
Boss

It has been
brought to our attention that some people who should be working will use
some of that time to browse the Web instead. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

We have a
report from the makers of "iBoss Pro" (not a completely disinterested
party) that their studies show that on average employees spend six hours
a week fooling around with the Internet. They got their results from
their own iBoss, a piece of hardware that costs $110 and is made by
Phantom Technologies (www.iphantom.com).

Said piece of
hardware sits between the PC and the Internet cable and connects to
both. It does not slow down the computer. What it does do is prevent the
user from going to chat rooms, gambling and gaming sites, and other
known distractions. (If you need to go to chat rooms and all that, don't
use it.)

By the way, we
think their estimate of six hours a week at work being spent playing on
the Internet is way understated. We recall that a couple of years ago, a
study of government employees found that many -- particularly those
working for the Social Security Administration -- spent close to half
their time on the Web. But hey, it's only tax dollars.

Games and the Man (Or
Woman)

When we first
started writing this column more than 25 years ago, games took up a
little more than 25 percent of all computer use. Experts predicted that
would soon drop to zero, and we noted at the time that we thought it
unlikely. Now, after all this time, games take up a little more than 25
percent of all computer use, just as they always have. Here are three
new ones:

·
"Auto Assault" by NC-Soft, for Windows XP. Auto Assault is what's called
an "MMORPG." That stands for "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing
Game," which is such a mouthful that it's usually reduced to the
acronym. There's even a web site:
www.mmorpg.com.

MMORPGs are an
effect of high-speed Internet use and a marketing model that says: "If
we sell a game once, we make twenty bucks. But if we sell a multiplayer
online game, we can charge everybody $10 a month to play, and we'll make
money forever." This is proving to be the case, because the fact is,
game players like competition.

In Auto
Assault, you build your own character (the "RP" part of MMORPG) and it
can be human or alien. You design the fighting vehicle he or she will
drive. From then on, it's open season. Players who've been there say
it's a lot of fun.

·
"Tycoon City, New York" from Atari. Have you ever wanted to rebuild New
York? Who hasn't? Here you can put down hundreds of new buildings,
design new neighborhoods, talk to the locals, take in a few shows,
revive disco. (Club 54, where are you?) Hit it, Jackson; take it from
the top.

·
"X-Men, the Official Game" from Activision. Why read a comic book when
you can be a comic book? Makes sense to us. Let the wild scenes and
characters leap off the page and into action.